Working Class Quotes - Page 16

• Limousines used to be reserved for the ruling class, or, on special occasions, for the working class. Today, limousines are like taxicabs with the door handles still intact.

  Erma Bombeck

  Funny, Humor, Doors

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• Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class. At a time when I had not yet grasped the significance of the fact that in my house English was a second language, or that I wore dresses while my brother wore pants, I knew--and I knew it was important to know--that Papa worked hard all day long.

  Vivian Gornick

  Girl, Brother, Work

  Vivian Gornick (1977). “The romance of American Communism”

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• My basic position is that the more mixed the society and the more mobility there is in it, the better. That's what makes things interesting. When you get a homogenous society, it's very, very dull, whether that's all working class or all upper class, because everybody thinks the same, everybody looks the same.

  Jarvis Cocker

  Thinking, Class, Interesting

  Interview with Ryan Dombal, pitchfork.com. November 21, 2014.

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• What you don't see on television is people dying today because they can't get to a doctor and they can't afford prescription drugs. That's why they are also dying. They are dying in Iraq because they are poor and they have gone into the military because they can't afford to go to college. They're dying because they're living in communities where asthma rates are extremely high because the air is filthy. The suffering of the poor and working class people is a virtual nonissue for the media. But that is the reality.

  Bernie Sanders

  Military, Reality, College

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• I don't think that you necessarily need a certain type of background to take on roles. You see actors from very, very privileged backgrounds playing working class characters and vice-versa. I don't think your background limits you as to what you can do.

  Daniel Radcliffe

  Character, Thinking, Class

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• But for poor black people and working-class black people, it is a much more difficult way to go. The over-incarceration of black people is just intolerable. When you look at the disparity in terms of education and access to fair schooling, it is horrible. If this would happen to white people in this country, it would not be tolerated.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Country, Class, White

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• Nonwhite and working-class women, if they are ever to identify with the organized women's movement, must see their own diverse experiences reflected in the practice and policy statements of these predominantly white middle-class groups.

  Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

  Practice, Class, White

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• During the present interval between the feudal age and the coming time, when life and its occupations will be freely thrown open to women as to men, the condition of the female working classes is such that if its sufferings were but made known, emotions of horror and shame would tremble through the whole of society.

  Harriet Martineau

  Men, Class, Suffering

  Harriet Martineau (1837). “Society in America”, p.178

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• I think the working-class part of me comes out. Sometimes the people who have the loudest mouths are upper-class, upper-middle-class. The quietest are often working-class people, people who are broke. There is a fear of losing whatever it is that you have. I come from that background.

  Billie Joe Armstrong

  Thinking, Class, People

  Source: greendayminority.tumblr.com

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• Celebrate my death for the good times I've had, For the work that I've done and the friends that I've made. Celebrate my death, of whom it could be said, "She was a working class woman, and a red."

  Malvina Reynolds

  Class, Done, Red

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• Cooking is work that is traditionally done by working-class people. The work itself is not glamorous. It's repetitive, and it's a lot closer to factory work than art, whatever level you're doing it at. Certainly chefs are used to living like rock 'n' rollers to some extent, inasmuch as we get a lot of those fringe benefits without having to learn how to play guitar.

  Anthony Bourdain

  Art, Rocks, Guitar

  Interview with Sean O'Neal, www.avclub.com. January 8, 2008.

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• If you go to working class, and working poor areas of America, the food sources that are relegated to them are generally limited to unhealthy ones.

  Anthony Bourdain

  Class, America, Poor

  "Interview: Anthony Bourdain Is Ready To 'Get Jiro' With His New Food Focused Graphic Novel". Interview with Alex Zalben, www.mtv.com. June 26, 2012.

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• "Get Rich or Die Tryin". That's the universal struggle. When I say it it might seem a bit negative but if a working class person says it it means they're determined.

  Curtis Jackson

  Struggle, Mean, Class

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• I can't really blame a lot of young sisters and brothers who believe that education has anything to offer them. Because as a matter of fact, it has nothing to offer them. Suppose they do get a high school diploma that is meaningful. What kind of job is awaiting them. The jobs that used to be available to working class people are not there as a result of the de-industrialization of this economy.

  Angela Davis

  Meaningful, Brother, Jobs

  Frontline Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

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• I'm pretty conservative when it comes to money. My parents were very working class and constantly working. There was always a very strong work ethic and that's put a more conservative, "save for a rainy day" mentality into me.

  Lemar

  Strong, Rainy Day, Class

  Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

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• Whoever wrote Shakespeare is a working class hero be he an aristocrat or a peasant. Shakespeare is a great leveler. We're presented with kings, queens, emperors and giants who feel the same things as everyone else: jealousy, love, anger, bitterness, grief, loss.

  Rhys Ifans

  Kings, Queens, Grief

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• Baltimore's often called the most northern Southern town. It has a distinct essence. It's definitely post-industrial, definitely Rust Belt, very working-class. I grew up outside of Washington, and I felt I was moving to a completely different place when I moved 30 miles north out of college.

  David Simon

  Moving, College, Essence

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• The best thanks we could offer those who went before and raised the Irish working class from their knees was to press forward with determination and enthusiasm towards the ultimate goal of their efforts, a Co-operative Commonwealth for Ireland.

  James Larkin

  Determination, Class, Goal

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• Too often, systems of oppression turn those who are the targets of the oppression against one another. It's happened in the USA between white working class and poor folks on the one hand, and people of color on the other.

  Tim Tebow

  Hands, Color, Class

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• I'm entirely uneducated. I went to public school - public in the American sense - a blue-collar, working-class school. I never got a scholarship, I left when I was 15, never did any exams.

  Rupert Graves

  School, Blue, Class

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• If you can stitch together that kind of coalition with young people, bringing together conservatives and evangelicals - and I will tell you, in Iowa, we also won Reagan Democrats, working-class voters.

  Ted Cruz

  Iowa, Class, People

  "Face the Nation" with John Dickerson, www.cbsnews.com. February 21, 2016.

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• Whereas the property-owning middle class could win freedom for themselves on the basis of rights to property--thus excluding others from the freedom they gain--the property-less working class possess nothing but their title as human beings. Thus they can liberate themselves only by liberating all humanity.

  Peter Singer

  Winning, Rights, Class

  Peter Singer (2000). “Marx: A Very Short Introduction”, p.30, Oxford Paperbacks

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• There was a time in my life when I was going in and out of houses that were extraordinarily different - from a working-class terrace in Northampton to the homes of friends who were really very wealthy. It was quite an odd position to be in, I realise looking back, and quite a nice one.

  Mark Haddon

  Nice, Home, Class

  "Mark Haddon: 'Don't go out and buy an Aston Martin, is the only rule'" by Susanna Rustin, www.theguardian.com. May 4, 2013.

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• We did not adopt socialism out of books, abstractions, humanism, or pity, but rather out of need for the Arab working class is the mover of history in this period.

  Michel Aflaq

  Book, Class, Needs

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• The Democrats have pretty much given up on the white working class. That would require a commitment to economic issues and that's not their concern.

  Noam Chomsky

  Commitment, Issues, Class

  "Noam Chomsky on America's Economic Suicide". Interview with Laura Flanders / GRITtv, www.alternet.org. May 4, 2012.

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